Our Terra Incognita on the Tisza River
TIME ZONES
Transcarpathian Ukraine first became part of Ukraine (Soviet Ukraine) in 1945. For centuries it belonged in turn to Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Czechoslovak Republic. The process of Transcarpathian adaptation to living in the young and still unsettled Ukrainian state is rather complicated. A vivid and simple symbol of this is the time, which determines Transcarpathian life rhythm and is, in a sense, an aftermath of this land’s being part of other states. The point is that now three time zones exist here simultaneously. Older people live according to Prague time, many of the middle-aged to Moscow, and young to Kyiv. This is like being a member of one party or another. A polite person, when asked about time in the street, always explains what time zone his watch is on.
When Kyiv time is going to replace Austrian and Czech shadows obviously depends on how the situation develops in our country as a whole. It looks like this is not going to happen very soon.
CHURCH AFFAIRS
Transcarpathia (Zakarpattia) today is dominated by Protestant churches (573 religious organization of various confessions) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — Moscow Patriarchate (565 organizations) followed by Greek Catholics (331) and Roman Catholics (98). As regards the Kyiv Patriarchate, it has only 16 religious organizations and communities. One can see from this that one-third of Zakarpattia residents who speak only Ukrainian belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. In spite of this, icons in churches are splendidly decorated with Ukrainian embroidered rushnyk towels, and on Sundays and Mondays men and women go to church sporting vyshyvanka embroidered national shirts. After a Saturday service I questioned many ordinary parishioners at one of the Moscow Patriarchate churches. It appeared that none of them has any idea about his/her being part of this church hierarchy or belonging to a certain church: for virtually everyone it starts and finishes with the person of the church’s senior priest. Answering the question what Orthodox jurisdiction they belong to, they gave a touching answer, “our priest’s.”
One of my Rakhiv interlocutors, a young and conscientious Greek Catholic, stated bitterly that Ukrainian Transcarpathian churches keep aloof from contemporary social problems and do not even try to make any contribution to their country’s development. “Look at our Hungarian Catholics,” he said. “They are Ukrainian citizens; they have been living here for centuries. And still they have a Hungarian national flag in their church and always sing the Hungarian National Anthem at every church service. And what are we doing? Praying for the Moscow patriarch?”
I also inquired about how the diversity in Zakarpattia residents’ confessions affects the everyday relations between neighbors, colleagues, etc. “It doesn’t while they are sober! They sit over a bottle together, and everything seems fine until they get a little drunk and start shouting, ‘You’re a Baptist! And you are sectarian! And you suck up to Moscow!’ Sometimes it even comes to shoving each other around.”
ON THE STEEP SLOPES
There are many khutirs, farmsteads, summer households, and meadows scattered around Rakhiv. All of them are in one or other way inseparably linked with the town, and one can see constant motion in the mountain paths. Goods for sale in the market and food for family members living in town are sent down, while packages from shopping, house utensils, and sometimes children go up the mountains. In summer the men usually stay in mountain valleys with the cattle or dry and stack hay on the slopes. Summer exchange between the town and highlanders is carried out mostly by women. In the heat or rain, they climb up the paths where, as tourists put it, your nose comes to rest against the slope, carrying a big load. Their faces become bloodshot, their feet swell, and they become short of breath. If it rains, which happens quite often here, their way becomes even more difficult and dangerous. In spite of all that, no attempts are seen from the Hutsuls themselves or the authorities to provide even minimum equipment to the most popular tracks, erecting hooks for loads and handrails in the steepest sections of the road. And, more important, nobody tries to reconstruct the old Austrian and Czech cobblestone roads, which still can be seen under the layers of ground, rocks, and grass, and to establish minibus communication on a regular, if not daily, basis. Meanwhile, Hutsul women climb the mountain carrying their sacks the way they did two or five centuries ago.
ON MOUNT HOVERLA
Compared to, say, the Caucasus or Alps, not to mention the Himalayas, the Carpathian Mountains are not very high. However, it is important for Ukrainians to know that the highest point in our country’s territory is 2061 meters, Mt. Hoverla near Rakhiv, on the border of Ivan- Frankivsk oblast. Experts state the mountain is actively growing, becoming a few centimeters higher each year. This happens because of the “cultural layer,” as future archeologists will probably call it, or, to put it simple, the garbage brought to Hoverla by noble nature-lovers and mountaineers.
We were climbing Hoverla early in the morning by a steep and therefore not overly popular path. It was a nice, fresh, and clear morning, and we were surrounded by near and faraway mountains covered with light mist. Quiet with scent of the grass — a true paradise! But as soon as we reached the top we faced a picture which reminded me of Jonathan Swift’s traveler whom bad luck had led to inside a giant’s mouth. The first thing he saw there was a man planting cabbage.
The ground on the mountaintop reminded one of Maidan Nezalezhnosti on weekends. There were all sorts of people behaving in various ways. Some sat in a big circle, like at a picnic, with children, dogs, and airbeds, refreshing themselves with considerable amounts of food and drinks, judging by the piles of garbage they left around them. Loud tour guides pointed to their groups the location of Rakhiv, Ivano- Frankovsk, and Vienna. Some, exhausted by climbing the mountain, were sleeping, resting their heads on knapsacks; a bearded tourist buried himself in a newspaper; many were taking photos near the obelisk and National Flag. A man was speaking by mobile phone, repeating all the time, “You’re there in Kyiv, and I’m calling you from Hoverla! HOVERLA!!!” A small group of aged people was singing Ukrainian songs accompanied by the sopilka pipe. A group of young people all dressed in blue was sitting at some distance from the others. They appeared to be Ukrainian and German participants of the International Youth Ecumenical Forum. They were singing religious hymns, Ukrainian and German folk songs, and finished with singing Germany’s State Anthem in Ukrainian and Ukraine’s in German. A not numerous group of true aristocrats was trying to collect the garbage left by others into garbage sacks, but they were fatally unequal to the task.
New tourists kept arriving. However, when there was no room to swing a cat, some company would get up, pack up their stuff, and drop out of sight. The balance was restored; you could sit down “on the edge” with your feet hanging down, look eastwards, then westwards, then at the sky one can see this way only from the top, and recall the old prayer, “Thank God I was able to live to see this day and live through it.”
EAST-WEST
Usually East Ukrainians and Kyivans disapprove if somebody, comparing Eastern and Western Ukraine, finds that the latter has some advantages. Making a comparison is truly difficult, since one has to rid oneself of all prejudice, balance the values, and consider the natural factor. But what strikes one’s eyes on the way from Kyiv to Rakhiv is that the farther you go to the West the more developed is the land, fields and vegetable gardens are better farmed, and there are more flowers around the houses. People’s will to decorate the life around them in spite of their social standing or limited finance becomes more distinct. This makes the difference even between Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. In Zakarpattia traces of the European tradition of the Austro-Hungarian period are more noticeable, while Ivano-Frankivsk oblast is evidence that pre-war Poland did not quite manage to become truly Western. The farther you go to the East, the more obvious is the influence of Moscow and Asia: too much land to care about every plot of it, too much indifference to the surrounding world to adorn your life.
